This is very strange behavior, but apparently something is being downloaded continually. My savefile is 3GB and over the course of the day it's now down to 1.3GB remaining. Has anyone experienced this? It happened yesterday and the indicator turned red. I was about to reboot it (--to increase the size) but it suddenly cleared itself and was back at 3GB. Well, it's happening again now.

I'm using Firefox 21.0 (up to date). I know there's some debate about savefile sizes, but this falls into the weird category IMO.

* * EDIT : After a four hour cat nap the savefile shrunk by an extra 300MB. My modem indicates activity but I can't see any specific file getting bigger...

*** EDIT : 15 hours later and I'm on RED with 407MB remaining. Losing about 100MB per hour. The Firefox green arrow shows only correct/recent activity.

* * PARTIALLY SOLVED : It somehow restored itself. Now it shows 2.4GB of 3GB. I'll close Firefox for awhile.

*** SOLVED : Aqualung R-1261 ---- Can someone confirm this is a bad program? As soon as it runs, you'll notice it starts some crazy downloading forever.Last edited by dennis-slacko531 on Thu 06 Jun 2013, 23:11; edited 6 times in total

@npierce
1. "So your hardware clock (a.k.a. "rtc", "real time clock") is set to UTC. That's fine, and I'll assume that is how you want it."
Actually, I don't want it set to UTC, and I believe I set it to "localtime".

2. "check the box labeled Hardware clock set to UTC, then click OK"
The UTC box is NOT checked, which is just as I want it to be.

5. "Did you happen to notice if Precise 5.6 or other Puppies gave the wrong time for a few (perhaps 15) seconds after booting, before Psync automatically corrected it?"
At this boot, Psync has NOT auto-sync-ed at all.
I have seen it auto-sync at previous boots, so I'll check that and report back.
-------------------------------
Edit:
OK, I Psync'd, clicked autostart", clicked "Save" on the desktop, and rebooted...
And the time was successfully Psync'd once the Puppy got to the desktop.
-------------------------------

6. "did you not run Psync "autostart" on previous Puppies?"
Correct, on previous Puppies I normally didn't use "autostart", but was forced to begin using it on this Puppy.

OK, in that case this command should correct your hardware clock, so that the time will be right after booting without the need to run Psync. This sets the hardware clock to match the system clock, so be sure that you have already corrected the time on your system clock before running it.

Code:

hwclock -w --localtime

And I think I see what caused Puppy to set the hardware clock incorrectly. But I'll need a little more time to write-up a fix to prevent that, so I thought I'd post this now so you can get your Puppy back on time sooner rather than later.

I am hoping that the above command will fix the clock and survive a reboot, so that the time is correct even before Psync fixes it. Please let me know if that is not the case.

As for Psync "autostart" working sometimes and not others, I am not sure why that happens. Is your PC connected to the network with a physical cable, or are you using wireless?

@npierce
1. "be sure that you have already corrected the time on your system clock before running it"
Oops! DID use Psync to correct the system clock, but didn't then click "Save" prior to using your command.
Is that OK? Or not?
Is "Save" of failure to save significant in this situation?

2. "I am hoping that the above command will fix the clock and survive a reboot, so that the time is correct even before Psync fixes it. Please let me know if that is not the case."
I'll reboot and report back on the outcome ASAP.
---------------------------
Edit:
On reboot...
Not easy to tell, but...
My system clock displays seconds, and I was watching those carefully...
And I saw the seconds jump by 2 [a 2-second jump forward].
Hence the clock was 2-seconds behind, even though it had been Psync'd right before the reboot.
----------------------------

3. " Is your PC connected to the network with a physical cable, or are you using wireless?"
Connected by cable to the router, which is right beside the keyboard+mouse+screen+PC.

Oops! DID use Psync to correct the system clock, but didn't then click "Save" prior to using your command.
Is that OK? Or not?

That's OK. Either way is fine. The important thing is that your system clock was correct when you executed the command.

Sylvander wrote:

Hence the clock was 2-seconds behind, even though it had been Psync'd right before the reboot.

Well, we have made good progress then. Being two seconds behind instead of an hour behind is improvement by a factor of 1800.

Actually, the two second jump could just be a matter of the clock display update being delayed slightly because the processor was momentarily busy doing something of a higher priority. See how it does over the course of a day.

Sylvander wrote:

Connected by cable to the router . . .

Possibly the network connection isn't always fully up before the Psync "autostart" script tries to contact a time server. That would explain why it sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. For PCs that use wireless, that script has a 15-second delay before it tries to use the network (because wireless connections generally take longer to come up than cabled connections). Perhaps a small delay is needed for cabled connections as well.

If Psync continues to give you trouble, I'd say file a new bug report for Psync, since I don't think that problem would be specific to Precise.

@npierce
1. "Actually, the two second jump could just be a matter of the clock display update being delayed slightly"
Yes, it occurred to me as I was reporting to you, that:
Perhaps Psync was taking a second or so to do the necessary, so that instead of the regular moving forward 1-second at a time, the time remained frozen at its second setting, then jumped forward 2-seconds instead of 1.

Most likely it is me being too nooby.
I did not like the pmusic I use mplayer in Lupu
so wanted to use it in Precise too. Thought it where included
should have looked first so I wrote mplayer in start with
and it do start something not sure what but show no gui
so can not shut it down.

Most likely one need to use PPM to install mplayer first?_________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Thanks Sylvander, I updatet 5.6.1
but one need to write gnome-mplayer in set run action
in Lupu it is only mplayer so I had no clue
Thanks for caring about me._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

That has happened to me before.
The way I got it to work was to use your browser to navigate to the parent web page that wget is trying to download from. Do this before you try to update. I don't know why it works. I may have a strange setup. (had to do this for Precise55 and previuos).

And I think I see what caused Puppy to set the hardware clock incorrectly. But I'll need a little more time to write-up a fix to prevent that . . .

OK, I'm back on this.

The problem was caused by a change in the hwclock utility.

That utility (a part of the util-linux package), when passed either the -w or --systohc option, reads the system clock and writes it to the hardware clock (a.k.a. RTC). You can choose to have it set the hardware clock to local time or to UTC by using the --localtime or --utc options, and the utility will convert the system time accordingly, if necessary, before writing it to the hardware clock.

When hwclock sets the hardware clock, it also writes some data to the /etc/adjtime file, which includes the string "LOCAL" or "UTC" to indicate which time that clock is being set to. If the utility is run with either the -w or --systohc option, but no --localtime or --utc option, it looks at its adjtime file to see what was last used, and uses that again.

But if the adjtime file does not exist, such as when a new distro has just been installed, the utility can't look at the file so uses a default value that is hard-coded in the utility. Previously that default was local time. But since util-linux v2.20 (released 2011-Aug-29), the default is UTC.

The following two excerpts from a bash session will demonstrate.

First on an older Puppy from 2011, which has an older hwclock utility:

When tasmod wrote Psync Time Server Synchroniser, the default was local time.

Psync uses hwclock to set the hardware clock to either local time or UTC, depending upon whether or not the box for "Hardware clock set to UTC" was checked at first boot, or whenever quicksetup, quickcountry, countrywizard, or timezone-set was last run. When setting it to UTC, Psync passes the --utc option to hwclock. But when setting it to local time, Psync doesn't pass an option, allowing hwclock to use the default, which had always been local time, if there was no /etc/adjtime file.

The end result is that after installing a Puppy with the new version of hwclock, if the user runs Psync before any other utility that sets the hardware clock (like set-time-for-puppy, set_hwclock_type, or the hwclock utility itself), the hardware clock will always be set to UTC, even if that wasn't the user's choice. And once set to UTC, subsequent runs of Psync will also set it to UTC because it will now default to the value that hwclock stored in the adjtime file, "UTC".

Since this problem only happens when there is no adjtime file, running any utility that properly creates the adjtime file (like set-time-for-puppy, set_hwclock_type, or the hwclock utility itself) before running Psync, will eliminate the problem. There is only a problem when that file doesn't yet exist.

Of course, that also means that if a user boots a live CD or fugal installation with "pfix=ram", preventing the save file from being used, running Psync would then cause this problem, since there would be no adjtime file. But if the user didn't then create a new save file, the good adjtime file would still be in the old save file (if the hwclock was ever set with this Puppy), and available at next boot, at which time the user could run Psync again to correct the hardware clock.

Anyway, I have discussed this with Rob (tasmod), who has his hands full with other things at the moment, and has kindly agreed to let me poke around in his code.

Attached is a .pet that I hope will make Psync compatible with both the old and new versions of hwclock. I have bumped the version from 2.8 to 2.9.

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